One Hundred Years Of Huck Finn

It was a difficult birth, but it looks as if the child will live forever

1960 Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn (University of California Press) by Walter Blair. This is the definitive study to date. MGM does it again, this time with Archie Moore as Jim.

1962 Huck Finn and His Critics edited by R. Lettis, R. F. McDonnell, and W. Morris: a collection of articles and a bibliography of Huck studies.

1965 Stravinsky says in Table Talk , written with Robert Craft: “At every meeting with the poet [T. S. Eliot], conversation was sooner or later drawn to the Mississippi, perhaps as much because of me as of him; the lure of the river was instilled in me in my childhood by a Russian translation of Mark Twain …”

1968 Life publishes (first time) Twain’s uncompleted manuscript of a projected book taking Huck and Tom out west among the Indians.

1973 The Russians make a movie of Huck , directed by Georgii Daneliya.

1974 A movie version is produced jointly by United Artists and Reader’s Digest : Paul Winfield plays Jim.

1976 Huck removed from required reading in Illinois high schools chiefly because of the word nigger .

1977 Mark Twain, A Reference Guide edited by Thomas Tenney. Reports that articles and books dealing chiefly with Huck totaled 43 between 1884 and 1915; 81 between 1916 and 1946; 161 between 1947 and 1961; and 282 between 1962 and 1976.